¡Viva el camarada Leonid Ilich Brézhnev!: Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev’s 1974 Visit to Cuba

William Zang

A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Curriculum in Russian and East European Studies at the College of Arts and Sciences.

Chapel Hill 2019

Approved by:

Donald J. Raleigh

Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

Michael Cotey Morgan

Ó 2019 William Zang ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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ABSTRACT

William Zang: ¡Viva el camarada Leonid Ilich Brézhnev!: Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev’s 1974 Visit to Cuba (Under the direction of Donald J. Raleigh)

This essay on General Secretary Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev’s visit to Cuba from January 28 to February 3, 1974, examines the influence of détente on the Soviet-Cuban alliance using

Brezhnev’s Cuban tour as a case study. I argue that Brezhnev, recognizing Cuba’s importance in maintaining détente with the United States, traveled to Cuba to ensure the success of this policy by strengthening the Soviet-Cuban alliance. Brezhnev consolidated détente by using his time in

Cuba to allay Cuban fears that a thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations took precedent over Cuban security from American intervention. I show that Brezhnev succeeded in extracting a cautious public endorsement of détente from Havana and in doing so found the limits of Soviet influence on Cuban behavior. I also determine that the vicissitudes of détente ultimately served to reinforce the improvement in Soviet-Cuban relations that began in 1968.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

Brezhnev in Cuba ...... 16

Conclusion ...... 39

Bibliography ...... 43

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INTRODUCTION

“Long live the eternal friendship between Cuba and the USSR! Long live the glorious

Communist Party of the Soviet Union! Long live comrade Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev! Fatherland or death! We will triumph!”1 Cuban leader Fidel Castro thus ended his speech on January 29, 1974, in front of one-million flag waving Cubans in the Plaza of the Revolution in central Havana. He made this address on the occasion of Soviet General Secretary Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev’s visit to

Cuba from January 28 to February 3 that year. One day before Castro declared these words before a fired-up crowd of Cuban citizens, Brezhnev’s arrival in Havana made him the first

Soviet general secretary to visit the “island of freedom,” as Soviet newspapers and publications referred to Cuba, and indeed all of Latin America. Cuba had become the first Latin American nation to host a Soviet leader because of the island’s close relationship with the Soviet Union that began shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, when a mass movement led by Fidel Castro, his brother Raul, and Che Guevara, among others, toppled the U.S. supported dictator Fulgencio

Batista. After quickly incurring Washington’s ire by fulfilling the promises of the Revolution through nationalizing foreign owned corporations and redistributing land, Havana formed an alliance with the Soviet Union, Washington’s sole superpower antagonist in the ideological war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world that was the Cold War.

Translations from Russian and Spanish are my own, unless otherwise specified. For Russian transliterations I have used the Library of Congress transliteration system.

1 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo: materiales y documentos referentes a la visita oficial y amistosa a la Republica de Cuba de Leonid Brezhnev, Secretario General Del CC de PCUS (28 de enero-3 de febrero de 1974) (Moscú: Editorial de la Agencia de Prensa Novosti, 1974), 31. Fidel Castro usually used the phrase “Fatherland or death! We will triumph!” to end his political speeches.

The 1960s proved to be a turbulent period in Soviet-Cuban relations. Ties between

Moscow and Havana were chilly at best between 1962 and 1968, initially caused by Soviet

Premier Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev’s decision to negotiate an end to the 1962 Cuban Missile

Crisis directly with U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Fidel Castro had felt as though Khrushchev had gone over his head in ending the crisis and relations spiraled downward.2 Ideological disagreements on how best to propagate revolution in Latin America widened the rift, with

Havana favoring its Foco theory3 and Moscow advocating for slower democratic transitions to power incentivized by states, such as Cuba, that had achieved a high level of development utilizing the communist model.4 By 1968 Cuba’s ailing economy and failure to incite other revolutions in Latin America along with Soviet economic disengagement left Havana with no choice but to patch things up with Moscow.5 Brezhnev’s visit marked a new high point in Soviet-

2 Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 1959-1991 (London: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 55.

3 Inspired by the strategies of the guerilla fighters in the Cuban Revolutionary War (1956-1959), the Foco theory of revolution asserted that small groups of guerilla fighters based in mountainous terrain could successfully inspire the populace of a given country to rise up against the government. The Soviets disliked this theory because the Communist Party did not have a role in it. Mark N. Katz, “The Soviet-Cuban Connection,” International Security 8, no. 1 (1983): 88–112, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538487.

4 Interview with Yuri Pavlov, February 21, 1999, Tape 10841, National Security Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-18/pavlov1.html.

5 In October 1969, Orlando Castro Hidalgo (of no relation to Fidel Castro), a former Cuban intelligence officer in France, testified to a U.S. Senate committee on the state of Soviet-Cuban relations. Once a committed revolutionary who dropped out of high school to fight in the Cuban Revolutionary War against Batista, Castro defected earlier that same year because he felt as though Cuba was becoming a Soviet satellite. In his testimony he relates that in the winter of 1968 all of the high-ranking members of the DGI (Directorio General de Inteligencia, the General Intelligence Directorate) were recalled to Havana in order to have Cuba’s new relationship with the Soviet Union explained to them. On its part, Moscow agreed to increase greatly Soviet technical assistance to Cuba in the areas of the armed forces, mineralogy, industry, agriculture, and intelligence, as well as increase shipments of raw materials, machinery and purchases of Cuban goods. Havana agreed to stop all public anti-Soviet pronouncements and to recognize the leadership of the CPSU in the world Communist movement. The information was not widely distributed and kept in strict secrecy, as Castro was not even allowed to tell his wife. Castro’s testimony is the only knowledge that exists of this agreement. Orlando Castro Hidalgo, “Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee of the Judiciary: The Communist Threat to the United States and The Caribbean,” § Committee of the Judiciary (1970).

2 Cuban relations as by 1974 Moscow and Havana had resolved almost all of their differences.

One significant disagreement, however, remained and transcended the improvement in relations: the issue of U.S.-Soviet détente. A relaxation in tensions between the socialist East and capitalist

West, détente sought to improve cooperation and communication between Moscow and

Washington, but in the end assumed that ongoing competition between the two superpowers would continue through more peaceful means, at least in Europe.6 Neither side, however, ceased to believe that it had the moral high ground or that it would eventually triumph.7 Because of

Cuba’s history of U.S. neocolonial domination, Havana strongly disapproved of any rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. Worried about how independent minded

Cuba might negatively impact a policy in which he had invested so much time and effort,

Brezhnev visited Cuba to try to ensure détente’s success by reaffirming the Soviet-Cuban alliance and encouraging Castro to improve relations with the United States. On the penultimate day of the general secretary’s time on the “island of freedom,” Castro and Brezhnev signed the

Joint Declaration, a document that endorsed détente.

In this essay on Brezhnev’s visit to Cuba from January 28 to February 3, 1974, I aim to examine how détente affected the Soviet-Cuban relationship using the general secretary’s Cuban tour as a case study. I argue that Brezhnev, recognizing Cuba’s importance in maintaining détente with the United States, traveled to Cuba to ensure the success of this policy by strengthening the Soviet-Cuban alliance and assuaging Cuban fears of an American intervention.

In fortifying the Soviet-Cuban alliance, Brezhnev further consolidated détente. I show that

6 Adam Bromke and Derry Novak, “Introduction,” in The Communist States in the Era of Détente: 1971-1977, ed. Adam Bromke and Derry Novak (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978), 227-28.

7 Mike Bowker, “Brezhnev and Superpower Relations,” in Brezhnev Reconsidered, ed. Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 91-93.

3 Brezhnev succeeded in extracting a cautious public endorsement of détente from Havana and in doing so found the limits of Soviet influence on Cuban behavior. I also determine that the vicissitudes of détente ultimately served to reinforce the improvement in Soviet-Cuban relations that began in 1968. In responding to Cuban fears, Moscow further integrated Cuba politically and economically into the Soviet sphere, shown by Cuban admission into the Council for Mutual

Economic Assistance (CEMA) and by Brezhnev’s visit Cuba in 1974. To support my argument, I utilize Soviet, Cuban, and American newspapers, Brezhnev’s and Castro’s speeches, memoirs of and interviews with Soviet and Cuban actors who participated in this event, Soviet and Cuban official reports on the visit, and a documentary film depicting Brezhnev’s time in Cuba. In addition, I examine declassified State Department and C.I.A. documents relating to Brezhnev’s visit that have not yet been tapped by historians of Soviet or Cuban foreign policy who have written on this topic.

Indeed, few historians have examined the Soviet-Cuban relationship in any detail. Much of the work on this topic has been carried out by political scientists and international relations specialists.8 One central debate exists among scholars of the Soviet-Cuban relationship: what was the nature of the Soviet-Cuban alliance? Was Havana a compliant dependent of Moscow, simply following orders from the Kremlin, or did Cuba maintain a relatively independent foreign policy? One view, called the “surrogate thesis,” popular during the Cold War decades of the

1960s, 70s, and 80s, posited that Havana was nothing more than a tool of the Kremlin owing to

Cuba’s economic dependence on the Soviet Union.9 The opposing view, and the one upon which

8 Historian Anne Gorsuch’s article on Soviet perceptions of Cuba in the early 1960s remains the only work that I am aware of on the cultural side of Soviet-Cuban relations. Anne Gorsuch, “‘Cuba, My Love’: The Romance of Revolutionary Cuba in the Soviet Sixties,” The American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 497-526.

9 For an academic example of the surrogate thesis see Leon Gouré and Morris Rothenberg, Soviet Penetration of Latin America (Washington: Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1975) or

4 most scholars now agree, is that Cuba and the Soviet Union engaged in some kind of voluntary relationship based on mutual interests, each deriving benefits that were worth the cost of maintaining the alliance.10 Critics of the surrogate thesis point out that Castro, motivated by a determined sense of Cuban nationalism, has always had his own reasons for supporting Soviet foreign policy and at times this support has been guarded and not immediately forthcoming.

Advocates of the surrogate thesis use developments in Cuban domestic politics, such as the sovietization of Cuban domestic political and economic structures, to demonstrate Cuban submission to Moscow’s will.11 In reality, as international relations specialists such as Mervyn J.

Bain have pointed out, the Cuban leadership has always had its own domestic reasons to pursue such courses of action. In this case, solidifying the organization of the Cuban state ensured the

Revolution would survive Fidel Castro’s death and made the economy, which until 1971 was an unmitigated disaster, more efficient and rational.12 In his memoirs, the Soviet Ambassador to the

United States from 1962-1986 Anatolii Dobrynin complained about how Cuba was perceived in the U.S. as a Soviet pawn, saying that “the myth of Cuba as a Soviet proxy was especially

G.W. Sand, Soviet Aims in Central America: The Case of Nicaragua (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989). For an example of the surrogate thesis in the U.S. press, see “The Enslaved,” Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, January 30, 1974.

10 W. Raymond Duncan, The Soviet Union and Cuba: Interests and Influence (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985); Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance.

11 From roughly 1971 to 1975 Castro and the leadership shifted away from the highly personalized style of rule that they had relied upon since the 1959 Revolution and toward an institutionalization of political and economic structures along Soviet lines with Cuban peculiarities. It is important to recognize, as feminist scholar Margaret Randall points out, that while in many ways Cuban adopted a Soviet system, in areas such as literature and the arts the majority of Cubans rejected Stalinism despite attempts from within the leadership to impose it. Margaret Randall, Exporting Revolution: Cuba’s Global Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2017), 10-12.

12 Mervyn Bain, Moscow and Havana 1917 to the Present: An Enduring Friendship in an Ever-Changing Global Context (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019), 31, 121.

5 damaging for us in America, where the Cuban crisis of 1962 had fixed the idea firmly.”13 My research on Brezhnev’s 1974 visit to Cuba supports these assessments.

Regarding Brezhnev’s visit specifically, several scholars have touched on it in monographs on Soviet-Cuban relations.14 Generally, they interpret Brezhnev’s trip to Cuba as a new high point in Soviet-Cuban relations, the culmination of a period of rapprochement that began in 1968. Political scientist W. Raymond Duncan sees the week that Brezhnev spent there as highlighting the importance of Cuba within Soviet foreign policy. Economist and historian of

Cuba Carmelo Mesa-Lago paints Brezhnev’s visit as an event that “consolidated the new stage of the Cuban Revolution [sovietization] and showed how Soviet influence had contributed to shape that stage.”15

As former Soviet diplomat and historian Yuri Pavlov notes, however, Castro’s agreements to toe the Soviet party line on détente seemed to be little more than surface level concessions. Pavlov emphasizes that Havana continued to support revolutionary forces in Latin

America, although these activities had been significantly curtailed by 1974.16 International relations scholar Mervyn J. Bain suggests that Castro used the occasion of Brezhnev’s visit to assert that the Cuban Revolution possessed a unique and storied revolutionary heritage separate

13 Anatolii Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962-1986), 1st ed. (New York: Times Books, Random House, 1995), 367.

14 Bain, Moscow and Havana 1917 to the Present; Duncan, The Soviet Union and Cuba; H. Michael Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy (London: Westview Press, 1985); Jacques Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategical Perspectives, 1959-77 (New York: Praeger, 1978); Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization, rev. ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978); Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance; Peter Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, Chatham House Papers 38 (London; New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987).

15 Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 25.

16Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 95.

6 from the Soviet Union’s legacy.17 Political scientist Jacques Levesque sees Brezhnev’s visit as a sign indicating the massive improvement of Soviet-Cuban relations. In this regard, Brezhnev’s trip not only strengthened Soviet-Cuban ties but also brought Cuba into détente while maintaining friendly relations with Washington. Brezhnev’s trip marked the boundaries of detente while maintaining friendly relations with the United States. Brezhnev’s presence in Cuba consolidated the Soviet-Cuban relationship and his reassuring words boosted Castro’s confidence in the Soviet commitment to defend Cuba.18 My study of Brezhnev’s visit to Cuba largely confirms both Pavlov’s and Levesque’s assessments.

In order to understand the context around Brezhnev’s visit, it is important to recognize the underlying disagreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union over détente and the differing

Soviet and Cuban outlooks on international politics from which this disagreement stemmed.

Both countries professed adherence to a common doctrine, Marxism-Leninism, and each sought to build an egalitarian society free from what they considered to be the oppression and injustice of the capitalist world. That said, Cuba and the Soviet Union experienced and interpreted the world of international relations differently and were influenced by their own historical circumstances.19 A long history of foreign domination and colonialism had taught Cubans that the world was divided into the Global North and the Global South. Yes, the Cold War was important and certainly shaped Havana’s decision-making process. However, the focus of Cuban leaders remained on maintaining an independent Cuban state and what the U.S. condescendingly

17 Bain, Moscow and Havana 1917 to the Present, 121.

18 Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 180-82.

19 Both Duncan and Shearman highlight the different Soviet and Cuban foreign policy motivations and underlying principles. Duncan, The Soviet Union and Cuba, 193; Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, 77-78.

7 called the “export of revolution.”20 Informed by a uniquely strong sense of Cuban identity and centuries of colonial domination, independence and internationalism became integral values of the Cuban Revolution.21 Through military, educational, and medical aid programs, Cubans demonstrated that they saw international politics as a North-South struggle, although at times

Cuban leaders had to compromise on these principles in order maintain good relations with the

Soviet Union, on which they relied for the economic vitality that made the achievement of these more important goals possible.22 Cuban leaders saw preserving strong ties with Moscow as essential in large part because they saw Cuban independence as firmly dependent on the Soviet-

Cuban alliance and on the Soviet resolve to maintain it, which it feared had weakened as a result of détente’s advance.23 As a March 1973 C.I.A. intelligence report commented, “although Castro has paid lip service to Moscow’s détente policy, he and other Cuban leaders have occasionally made indirect criticisms along the line that ‘imperialism’s apparent cooperation … is deceptive and false in the long run.’”24 Havana’s chief enemy in the struggle against the Global North was the United States. Castro feared aggression from Washington for good reason, having already repelled one U.S. invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

20 Randall, Exporting Revolution, 1-2.

21 Ibid., 4; Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations, 4.

22 The Cuban leadership supported several Soviet causes that damaged its credentials as an anti-imperialist country, including Fidel Castro’s endorsement of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Castro’s strong denunciation of the theory of two imperialisms, which argued that both the United States and the Soviet Union were in fact imperialist powers, in favor of the Soviet Union at the 1973 Nonaligned Conference, and Cuban support for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Jorge I. Dominguez, “The Nature and Uses of the Soviet-Cuban Connection,” in The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship, ed. Eusebio Mujal-León (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 176-77.

23 Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 15.

24 “Weekly Summary, Special Report: Cuba’s Diplomatic Gains” (CIA, March 9, 1973), https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85t00875r001500050012-4.

8 On a larger scale, Cuba and most other Latin American countries experienced a fundamentally different Cold War than the Soviet Union and Europe did. The second half of the

20th century saw horrendous violence in all parts of Latin America, often caused by endogenous factors influenced by the international Cold War climate and exacerbated by Soviet and U.S. backing of local actors to suit their own interests.25 Détente hardly seemed to restrain

Washington’s overt and covert actions in the Global South, as the Vietnam War, the 1973 CIA backed coup in Chile, U.S. support for the ultra violent dictatorships of Argentina and Uruguay, and aid to repressive Central American governments all demonstrated. From the Cuban perspective, Moscow had already forsaken several countries of the Global South, such as

Vietnam, out of fear that such support might upend the fragile détente process.26

The view from the Kremlin, however, was different. Historian Vladislav Zubok coined the term “revolutionary-imperial paradigm” to explain Soviet foreign policy. Soviet leaders played the game of global power politics, he argues, striving for security and power for the

Soviet state.27 In this struggle Soviet leaders were motivated by Marxism-Leninism, an ideology that preached that the world’s extant political systems would be overturned by the coming revolution that would enthrone a dictatorship of the proletariat. Soviet leaders paradoxically subscribed to this revolutionary ideology while at the same time acting pragmatically like a

“normal” powerful state on the international stage by constructing an empire in Eastern Europe and Asia while seeking to expand Soviet influence wherever possible. Soviet leaders defined

25 Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 3-4.

26 Antoni Kapcia, Cuba in Revolution: A History since the Fifties (London: Reaktion, 2008), 121.

27 Vladislav Zubok, Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), x.

9 international affairs as a struggle between the socialist East and the capitalist West, a struggle that had nearly proven catastrophic for the world’s population in the October 1962 Cuban

Missile Crisis. The Soviet leadership of the post-Khrushchev era gravitated toward détente in part as a conservative reaction to what they saw as Khrushchev’s brinksmanship in the

Caribbean. Détente received strong support from Brezhnev himself, who saw the achievement of this policy as the fulfillment of his own lifelong dream of securing peace.28 Détente clearly served Soviet superpower interests by enabling Moscow to engage in foreign trade, legitimizing it as a superpower equal to the United States, and allowing it to consolidate its empire in Europe, and guarantee post-WWII borders there.29

While the Soviet leadership proved to be immanently practical in many areas, Cuba always was a decidedly emotional issue for almost all Soviet citizens. The interviewees in Soviet

Baby Boomers, by historian Donald J. Raleigh, relate that the Cubans, especially Fidel Castro himself, inspired many Soviet people with revolutionary fervor and excitement, a feeling that a generation of Soviet citizens born after the 1917 October Revolution and formative wars of the first half of the 20th century had never felt before. Raleigh posits that the Cuban Revolution

“allowed Soviet citizens to vicariously relive their own revolution.”30 In their evaluation of the

Soviet 1960s, Soviet journalists and writers Petr Vail’ and Alexander Genis write that “the

Cuban Revolution became a bright event for the Soviet people of the 60s: the powerful, creative impulse of social upheaval linked to a romantic, attractive, faraway ocean.”31 Politburo member

28 Vladislav Zubok, “The Soviet Union and Détente of the 1970s,” Cold War History, no. 4 (2008): 432.

29 Mike Bowker, “Brezhnev and Superpower Relations,” 91-93.

30 Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 151.

31 Petr Vail’ and Aleksandr Genis, 60-ye. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis Publishers, 1989), 44.

10 Anastas Mikoyan once said that “‘you Americans must realize what Cuba means to us old

Bolsheviks. We have been waiting all our lives for a country to go communist without the Red

Army. It has happened in Cuba, and it makes us feel like boys again.’”32 This emotional reaction that Cuba elicited certainly contributed to the fact that Moscow continued to support Havana even when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were making public pronouncements against Soviet doctrine in the mid 1960s and despite the fact that Moscow’s Cuban connection complicated détente to a significant degree.33

In regard to Brezhnev’s attitudes toward Cuba, we learn from the memoir of his assistant,

Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov, that Brezhnev tried to maintain good relations with Cuba while keeping the island at arm’s length for fear of antagonizing Washington.34 This is because Cuba had always been a poignant issue for U.S. politicians and their innately emotional and at times irrational Cuban policies made the island a potential graveyard for détente. As Wayne S. Smith, a former U.S. diplomat in Cuba, opined in 1982, “Cuba continues to have much the same effect on

United States Administrations that the full moon reputedly had on werewolves.”35 Historian

Louis Pérez highlights the emotional quality of American policy toward Cuba, arguing that “the issue of US relations with Cuba under Fidel Castro early ceased to be a matter of rational policy

32 Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 147.

33 Jorge I. Dominguez, “The Nature and Uses of the Soviet-Cuban Connection,” in The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship, ed. Eusebio Mujal-León (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 161-62.

34 A. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva: vospominaniia diplomata, sovetnika A.A. Gromyko, pomoshchnika L.I. Brezhneva, Iu.V. Andropova, K.U. Chernenko i M.S. Gorbacheva (Moskva: Mezhdunar. otnosheniia, 1994), 174-75.

35 Wayne S. Smith, “It Is Not Impossible to Deal with Castro: Realism Is Required,” The New York Times, September 5, 1982, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/05/opinion/it-not-impossible-deal-with-castro- realism-required-washington-cuba-continues.html.

11 calculation and passed into the realm of pathology.”36 The issue of Cuba complicated the détente process because Havana took it as a given that it would support national liberationist movements throughout Latin America and the Global South. This angered Washington and threatened détente because many Washington politicians saw Cuba as a Soviet proxy.37 Moscow had to cope with a nationalistic Cuban foreign policy over which the Kremlin had little control while dealing with an American government that thought otherwise. The issue of Cuba had already threatened détente once, during the 1970 Cienfuegos Crisis.38 Brezhnev understood how explosive an issue Cuba could be, and therefore treated Cuba with extreme caution, trying to distance himself from Castro while continuing to give robust support to the Cuban economy in order to avoid entanglements with Washington.39 After experiencing WWI as a child, WWII as a soldier, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 as a member of the Politburo, Brezhnev tried to avoid another major war at all costs.40 U.S. policies and attitudes toward Cuba, therefore, played an important limiting factor on how Brezhnev could act in regard to Cuba.

36 Louis A. Pérez, “Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy Toward Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 2 (2002): 250.

37 Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations, 3-7.

38 The point at issue emerged in September 1970 when Washington believed that overflights of Cuban territory had picked up evidence of a Soviet submarine base under construction in Cienfuegos, a port city in south-central Cuba. These developments were unacceptable to Washington, which viewed any Soviet base to be a violation of the 1962 understanding reached between Moscow and Washington. It is not at all clear that the Soviet Navy had attempted to build any kind of base in Cienfuegos and Soviet diplomatic staff were in fact puzzled at Washington’s reaction. While American and Soviet diplomats were trying to negotiate behind closed doors in order to avoid a public spectacle, Henry Kissinger, U.S. National Security Advisor, informed Soviet Ambassador to Washington Anatolii Dobrynin in September, 1970, that that ‘the U.S. Government treats this whole matter of the base with the utmost seriousness from the standpoint of the further development of Soviet-U.S. relations.’ Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years, 1969-1972, eds. David C. Geyer and Douglas E. Selvage (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2007), Document 84.

39Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva,174-75.

40 Donald J. Raleigh, “‘Soviet’ Man of Peace: Leonid Il´ich Brezhnev and His Diaries,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 4 (2016): 843.

12 Brezhnev demonstrated his desire to support Cuba at a comfortable distance as the development of U.S.-Soviet détente accelerated. Moscow sought to strengthen economic and political ties with Cuba, which served the dual purpose of increasing Soviet influence over

Cuban economic and political institutions and increasing the efficiency of the Cuban economy as well as easing Cuban fears over détente. In 1970 the two countries founded the

Intergovernmental Soviet-Cuban Commission for Economic, Scientific, and Technological

Cooperation and in July 1972, soon after the first Nixon-Brezhnev Summit in Moscow that May,

Cuba became the first non-European member of the Soviet-led CEMA.41 Although it is likely that Havana would have preferred entry into the Warsaw Pact over CEMA in order to increase its security against potential U.S. aggression, any military cooperation between Cuba and the Soviet

Union would have antagonized Washington and jeopardized detente.42

By the second Nixon-Brezhnev Summit in June 1973, U.S.-Soviet relations had greatly improved and détente reigned in Europe. At that point, Brezhnev chose to accept a long-standing invitation from Castro to visit Cuba.43 He informed Nixon of his intentions at the 1973 summit.44

On July 10, less than one month after Brezhnev had returned to Moscow from Washington, a

Pravda article announced Brezhnev would go to Cuba sometime in October that year.45 In

41Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 166-67.

42 Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 17.

43 Ibid., 23.

44 In a discussion with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko on December 22, 1973, Henry Kissinger refers to a conversation Brezhnev had with President Nixon during the summit. Brezhnev apparently told Nixon that he was going to Cuba to promote a better climate for relations between the United States and Cuba. “Middle East; U.S.- GDR Relations; Summit Preparations; SALT; CSCE; MBFR; Trade; Brezhnev Visit to Cuba; Pompidou and Brandt Visits to USSR [Meeting with Andrei Gromyko]” (National Security Archive, December 22, 1973), Accession number KT00971, Digital National Security Archive: The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977, https://search.proquest.com/dnsa/docview/1679083578/abstract/1807F3960A0D4BF5PQ/3?accountid=14244.

45 “O vizite tov. L. I. Brezhneva na Kubu,” Pravda, July 10, 1973.

13 October 1973, after Brezhnev’s visit had been delayed, a State Department memo remarked that

“probably Castro needs coddling following another high-level US Soviet summit meeting.”46

The same memo noted that it was extremely unusual for the general secretary to have his travel plans announced so far in advance and that it was possible this announcement was meant to console Havana after a successful U.S.-Soviet summit.

A little more than a month before Brezhnev left for Havana, the general secretary instructed

Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to communicate the purpose of his visit to Cuba to President

Nixon. On December 22, 1973, Gromyko met with Henry Kissinger. The Soviet foreign minister wanted to make sure that President Nixon was aware that the general secretary would be traveling to Cuba in January 1974. The visit would not come across as overtly anti-American and no new significant economic agreements would be signed, the Soviet foreign minister promised his American counterpart. Gromyko assured Kissinger that the visit “will not in the slightest way have any anti-American character. On the contrary, it will promote, as we see it, a better climate for relations between Cuba and the United States.”47 Kissinger cordially received the news and told the Soviet foreign minister that Nixon would appreciate it. The U.S. Secretary of State later reciprocated by ordering all American covert operations to cease for the duration of Brezhnev’s time in Cuba and then informing Ambassador Dobrynin of his actions.48 In order to reinforce to

46 “Brezhnev’s Travel to Cuba,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Russia Moscow, October 24, 1973), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1973MOSCOW13310_b.html.

47 “Middle East; U.S.-GDR Relations; Summit Preparations; SALT; CSCE; MBFR; Trade; Brezhnev Visit to Cuba; Pompidou and Brandt Visits to USSR [Meeting with Andrei Gromyko]” (National Security Archive, December 22, 1973), Accession number KT00971, Digital National Security Archive: The Kissinger transcripts: a verbatim record of U.S. diplomacy, 1969-1977, https://search.proquest.com/dnsa/docview/1679083578/abstract/1807F3960A0D4BF5PQ/3?accountid=14244.

48 “[Issue with Soviet Union; Includes Follow-up Telephone Conversation at 5:25 P.M.],” January 22, 1974, Accession Number KA11876, Digital National Security Archive, https://search.proquest.com/dnsa/docview/1679066451/abstract/90FEB71071854D3CPQ/1.

14 President Nixon that his visit was not a threat to U.S.-Soviet ties, Brezhnev sent a message to

President Nixon on January 28 while he was flying past the East coast of the U.S. en route to

Havana communicating the general secretary’s desire that relations between Moscow and

Washington would continue to advance “‘in the interests of international security and world peace.’”49

49 Quoted in Christopher S. Wren, “Brezhnev Begins Visit to Havana: Trip, Soviet Leader’s First, to Last Through Sunday Brezhnev Arrives in Cuba,” The New York Times, January 29, 1974.

15

BREZHNEV IN CUBA

General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev received a hero’s welcome on January 28, 1974, at

3:15 p.m. when he and his entourage landed at Joe Martí International Airport outside of Havana to great fanfare. As he stepped out of the airplane, Brezhnev greeted the tumultuous mass by heartily shouting “Viva Cuba!” (long live Cuba!) three times. Visibly thrilled as the crowd readily responded to the traditional Spanish blessing by shouting “Viva!”, Brezhnev descended the stairs from the plane as the crowd of Cubans chanted “Brezhnev, Brezhnev, Brezhnev!,” all the while waiving Soviet and Cuban flags.50 Cuban leader Fidel Castro warmly greeted the general secretary at the bottom of the staircase. Brezhnev, all smiles, give a warm hug to Castro, dressed as always in his olive-green army uniform, who happily reciprocated. The cheers continued as Cuban leaders, including Minister of the Armed Forces Raul Castro and President

Oswaldo Dorticós welcomed Soviet Politburo members Andrei Gromyko, the minister of foreign affairs, and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Vladimir Shcherbitskii, among others, who accompanied Brezhnev on his historic visit.51

Granma, the official press organ of the Cuban Central Committee, ecstatically hailed

Brezhnev’s arrival. “It is happiness, enormous and immense, that dominates everything,” one journalist adamantly declared.52 Soviet and Cuban journalists proudly wrote that over one

50 Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro pozhalovat’- govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

51 Other notable members of Brezhnev’s entourage included First Secretary of Leningrad Grigorii Romanov, Central Committee Secretary Konstantin Katushev, Secretary of Civil Aviation Boris Bugaev, Vice-President of the State Committee of Foreign Economic Relations Ivan Arkhipov, and the Director General of the Soviet news agency TASS, Leonid Zamiatin.

52 Julio Garcia, “Cincuenta Lineas,” Granma, January 29, 1974.

16 million Cubans came from different parts of the island to welcome Brezhnev. Many of them lined the thirty-kilometer route between José Martí International Airport and the city center of

Havana and cheered as Brezhnev and Castro rode by in a convertible.53 The next day Brezhnev and Castro were due to speak in Havana at the Plaza of the Revolution, notable as the location of many of Castro’s speeches and a monument to José Martí, considered by Cubans to be the father of the Cuban nation. To assure that the speeches would be well attended, the entire back page of the January 28 edition of Granma urged Cubans to come to the Plaza of the Revolution the next day in order to “participate in the mass act to testify to the dear visitor the profound sentiments of friendship, gratitude and revolutionary brotherhood” that united the Cuban and Soviet peoples.

“The slogan is: one million in the plaza!”54

The general secretary began his first full day in Havana by laying a huge wreath of red flowers at the monument of José Martí in the Plaza of the Revolution. Brezhnev and Castro then went into negotiations. While neither the Soviet, nor the Cuban presses reported what transpired in this or in any session of talks, Soviet papers communicated that Brezhnev recounted to Castro all of the latest developments in the Soviet Union, including the 24th Party Congress in 1971 in which Brezhnev had taken charge of Soviet foreign policy and publicly promoted détente for the first time.55 Later that day the Cuban people amassed in the Plaza of the Revolution for the premier event of Brezhnev’s visit in what the Soviet documentary film called “a powerful manifestation of the unbreakable union between the CPSS (Communist Party of the Soviet

Union) and the Communist Party of Cuba.”56 That evening both Brezhnev and Castro spoke to

53 A.M. Aleksandrenkov, ed., Vizit Leonida Il’icha Brezhneva v Respubliku Kuba (Moskva: Politizdat, n.d.), 8-9.

54 Granma, January 29, 1974.

55 Raleigh, “‘Soviet’ Man of Peace,” 847.

56 Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro Pozhalovat’- Govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

17 the enormous crowd of Cubans, many of whom had donned red hats and were waving Soviet and

Cuban flags. These speeches are especially important as sources in the account of Brezhnev’s trip because, along with the Joint Declaration signed at the end of the visit, they are the only public pronouncements coming directly from the Soviet and Cuban leadership through which we can ascertain the Soviet and Cuban policy positions and the progress of negotiations between the two parties that took place during Brezhnev’s visit. Both Cuban and Soviet newspapers mention repeatedly that both parties negotiated every day, but we are not privy to their content or outcomes except through these sources. As both speeches were printed in their entirety in Cuban and Soviet newspapers, were translated into English by a Cuban publisher, and received the lion’s share of coverage related to the visit in the international press, we can tell what Brezhnev and Castro thought important for their peoples and more importantly for the world to know.57

Détente is a prominent theme of both the speeches and Joint Declaration precisely because those two events received the most international attention. Brezhnev’s speech was indeed prepared in advance in Moscow with an awareness that the general secretary’s words would affect the international perception of Cuba.58

Speaking first, Fidel Castro recounted the story of the Cuban Revolution, highlighting the crucial Soviet role in Cuba’s development and the two countries’ common revolutionary

57 Several accounts of Brezhnev’s visit, Brezhnev’s and Castro’s speeches, and the Joint Declaration exist. Two Spanish versions were published, one in Moscow and one in Havana: En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo and En estrecha y eterna amistad: visita a Cuba del compañero Leonid I. Brezhnev, Secretario General del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de la Unión Soviética, 28 de enero a 3 de febrero de 1974 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974). The most complete account of the visit was published in Russian: Aleksandrenkov, ed., Vizit Leonida Il’icha Brezhneva v Respubliku Kuba. Pravda, Izvestiia, and Granma ran Brezhnev’s and Castro’s speeches and the Joint Declaration in their entirety. Finally, both speeches and the Joint Declaration were translated into English and published in Cuba: Fidel Castro and Leonid Il’ich Brezhnev, But Revolutionary Cuba Never Was and Never Will Be Alone (Havana: Political Editions, 1974).

58 Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva, 176-77.

18 heritage while also reminding Brezhnev that Cuba had a unique revolutionary heritage stretching back to the 19th century.59 Praise for détente was forthcoming, but not plentiful. “Never like today, of course, has Soviet power had the great possibility to influence the world affairs in favor of peace, because never like today has the correlation of forces been so favorable to the revolutionary movement and international progressives.”60 Castro couched his recognition of détente within praise for Soviet military strength and the crisis of capitalism that Castro believed to be looming. “The peace program of the 24th Congress of the CPSU gains a special importance, as well as the efforts which you are making personally in favor of international détente.”61 The current correlation of forces would allow the socialist countries to get down to the real problems of the modern capitalist world order: hunger, disease, illiteracy, and underdevelopment. By referencing the problems of the Global South, Castro integrated détente into the extant Cuban North-South outlook on international politics, arguing that in the end détente was justified because it would help Cubans on their revolutionary mission to free the

Global South from exploitation. The Cuban leader did not fail to mention the possibility of

American intervention, saying that “in the arsenal of imperialist methods there still remains military aggression.”62

As night fell, Leonid Brezhnev stepped up to the podium wearing a white panama hat that

Castro had given him for the sun. The crowd, a heaving sea of red Soviet flags and red-blue striped Cuban flags, erupted as Brezhnev leaned into the microphone and bellowed “Viva Cuba!”

59 En estrecha y eterna amistad, 21-25.

60 Ibid., 50.

61 Ibid., 29.

62 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 25.

19 once again.63 In his speech, Brezhnev painted a picture of fraternal Cuban and Soviet peoples striving toward a common goal, communism, achieving one success after another. Carefully walking the line between extolling détente and improved U.S.-Soviet relations while ensuring the

Cubans that the Soviet Union would stand behind them with military force if necessary,

Brezhnev articulated his vision of détente and peaceful coexistence to the crowd as “a struggle of lasting peace” that will “eradicate wars of aggression from the life of humanity forever.”64 The period of respite offered by this peace was an opportunity for socialism to develop and advance.

He lent credence to his arguments by quoting Cuban revolutionary hero and writer José Martí.

“‘The future of mankind is peace,’ said that glorious son of Cuba, José Martí.” “War, which in the past was the first recourse, is now the last. Tomorrow, it will be a crime.”65 The general secretary endorsed the Soviet understanding of detente, which included “the right of the people of the socialist countries to build a new society without foreign interference of any kind.”66 The concept of peaceful coexistence with the United States, however, did not mean that Moscow was going to stop supporting its allies,

Brezhnev emphasized that “we are not pacifists. We are absolutely against peace at any price.”67 Brezhnev deployed rhetoric such as this to assuage Cuban fears by assuring the onlookers that although Moscow advocated for peace and a better relationship between East and

West, the Soviets still carried a big stick. Détente meant a reduction in tensions, but Brezhnev’s comments demonstrate that it was oxymoronically based upon a vast and equal buildup of

63 Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro pozhalovat’- govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

64 Castro and Brezhnev, But Revolutionary Cuba Never Was and Never Will Be Alone, 35.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 En estrecha y eterna amistad, 35.

20 military forces, effectively a peace built on goodwill as well as guns. Brezhnev’s comments gained him cheers from the Cuban crowd as he clearly indicated Soviet support for Cuba.

After this strong language on the Soviet willingness to use force, Brezhnev defended the recent thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations in the context of the ever-present threat of an all-consuming nuclear war, doing his best to sell the policy of Peaceful Coexistence, a concept he had borrowed from Khrushchev, to the Cuban people. Peaceful coexistence with the capitalist countries did not prohibit Moscow from supporting national liberation movements in the Global South.68 As

Brezhnev argued, the 1973 agreement against the use of nuclear weapons that Brezhnev and

Nixon concluded at the second Nixon-Brezhnev Summit that year went a long way toward eliminating the threat of nuclear war to all peoples.69 The fact that improved relations with the

United States would also help the socialist nations reach other long-standing goals, as it had helped end the Vietnam War and conflict in the Middle East, was “indisputable.” “In this way,”

Brezhnev went on to assert, “one could say that the improvement already begun in Soviet-

American relations is useful for universal peace.” “We will push forward along our line of principles” as long as the United States reciprocated in kind.70

Both speeches represent a delicate balancing act. For Castro, détente was something he had to endorse because of the alliance with the Soviets. The terms of this alliance did not mandate that Havana and Moscow agree on every single matter in international politics; it only required them to outwardly demonstrate solidarity with each other. Therefore, Castro begrudgingly endorsed détente, but in doing so integrated it into the Cuban worldview in which

68 Mark Webber, “‘Out of Area’ Operations: The Third World,” in Brezhnev Reconsidered, ed. Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 114.

69 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 39.

70 Ibid.

21 internationalism and solidarity were integral parts.71 Brezhnev’s speech represented a bid to strike a precarious midline between endorsing détente and expressing support and solidarity with

Cuba. While exalting détente and defending U.S.-Soviet rapprochement he made clear the Soviet

Union’s readiness to defend its Cuban ally with force of arms if necessary.

Soviet and Cuban press coverage of both speeches pushed the same themes: the crowd enthusiastically received both speakers and their respective messages. The footage of Brezhnev’s speech in the Soviet documentary of the visit was heavily edited in order to show that the crowd gave applause when détente was mentioned when they actually did not.72 It was obviously important for Soviet citizens to understand that the Cubans in the Plaza of the Revolution wholeheartedly supported Brezhnev and détente. In its coverage Granma clearly communicated

Castro’s new approval of détente through the excerpts from Brezhnev and Castro’s speeches printed on the front page of the January 30 edition. Echoing Castro’s speech, Granma emphasized that détente meant freedom from foreign interference (read: U.S. intervention), a freedom guaranteed by Soviet arms.73 The February 8 edition of the Cuban weekly magazine

Bohemia reiterated the same theme.74

71 Randall, Exporting Revolution, 209.

72 By comparing the Cuban written source on Brezhnev’s speech and the documentary, I was able to ascertain that the filmmakers edited the documentary in such a way as to make Brezhnev’s speech seem more well received than it was. The written sources containing Brezhnev’s speech indicate when the crowd gave applause at Brezhnev’s comments and when they did not. The applause segments shown in the documentary footage of Brezhnev’s speech and in the written versions did not line up, therefore making it seem as though the documentary had been intentionally edited to make it seem as though certain parts of Brezhnev’s speech, such as those on détente, received more acclaim than they really did. Some of the editing was rather heavy handed. For example, in one scene Brezhnev was clearly speaking at night. After showing Brezhnev saying a few words about détente, the film cuts to an applauding crowd. The problem was that the scene from the crowd was shot during the day while Brezhnev was obviously speaking at night. En estrecha y eterna amistad: Visita a Cuba del compañero Leonid I. Brezhnev, Secretario General del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de la Unión Soviética, 28 de enero a 3 de febrero de 1974 (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1974); Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro Pozhalovat’- Govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

73 Granma, January 30, 1974.

74 Bohemia, February 8, 1974, 30-31.

22 Soviet media outlets hailed Brezhnev’s speech as a considerable contribution to international peace. The official Russian-language account of Brezhnev’s visit highlights the enthusiastic reception of Brezhnev’s speech among the Cuban populace, stating that the gigantic crowd composed of “the heroic Cuban people warmly expressed . . . their firm resolve to strengthen and deepen this friendship and cooperation, moving together on the same side of the path of peace, progress and socialism.”75 Articles in Soviet newspapers communicated a similar theme, focusing on the overwhelmingly favorable reactions of Cuban citizens to Brezhnev’s speech.76

U.S. and international press sources focused on different aspects of Brezhnev’s pro- détente message. The New York Times reported on Brezhnev’s assertion that Cuba was not a strategic base of Soviet influence, a message that seemed to be aimed at ensuring Washington that the Soviet presence in Cuba was not a security threat for the U.S.77 Other U.S. journalists interpreted Brezhnev’s speech as a call for Cuba to improve relations with the United States.78

One British news outlet underscored the parts of Brezhnev’s speech that advocated against the international arms race.79 The South China Morning Post, an English-language paper published in Hong Kong, choose to stress Fidel Castro’s embrace of détente.80 Brezhnev, understanding

75 Aleksandrenkov, Vizit Leonida Il’icha Brezhneva v Respubliku Kuba, 49.

76 G. Zafesov and А. Lukovets, “S otkrytymi serdtsami: spetsial’nye korrespondenty ‘Pravdy’ peredaiut iz Gavany,” Pravda, January 30, 1974; R. Kniazev, and N. Chegir’, “Govoriat kubintsy,” Literaturnaia gazeta, January 30, 1974.

77 “Brezhnev Says Cuba Is Not a Vital Base for Soviet,” The New York Times, January 31, 1974.

78 “Brezhnev Fuels Rumors of Renewed U.S.-Cuba Ties,” The Sun (1837-1992); Baltimore, Md., January 31, 1974.

79 “Brezhnev Warning against Return to Arms Race,” The Times of London, January 31, 1974, The Times Digital Archive.

80 “Castro Backs Soviet Policy of Detente,” South China Morning Post, January 31, 1974.

23 that his audience consisted of much more than the Cuban crowd in front of him, had clearly succeeded in projecting his message to Washington and beyond and therefore also in promoting detente.

Although the most publicized moment of the visit came at the beginning, Brezhnev’s time in Cuba was far from over. Before considering the Joint Declaration that capped Brezhnev’s

Cuban tour, I will examine the remainder of the general secretary’s visit. Brezhnev’s and

Castro’s speeches and the Joint Declaration both dealt with détente in accordance with their intended broad international audience. What took place during the middle of Brezhnev’s visit, however, received little coverage from U.S. and international outlets and emphasized the strengthening of Soviet-Cuban relations that Brezhnev’s trip symbolized while mostly avoiding

U.S.-Soviet détente. While the actual intent of these activities and rationale behind their planning in the minds of the Soviet visitors and Cuban hosts remains unknown, it is clear that the bulk of

Brezhnev’s visit emphasized the strong state of the Soviet-Cuban alliance. Brezhnev’s week-long sojourn went a long way toward cultivating this sense of unity, while his actions reinforced it. In engaging in ceremonies and cultural events that called attention to the extent of Soviet economic aid to Cuba and that referenced their common experiences as socialist nations that successfully fought revolutionary struggles, Brezhnev succeeded in building up the Soviet-Cuban alliance and therefore in reinforcing détente.

The negotiations continued on the morning of January 30, with Brezhnev’s entire entourage present on the Soviet side, while Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós and Minister of the Armed Forces Raúl Castro accompanied Fidel Castro. Later that day Dorticós presented

Brezhnev with the Order of José Martí, the highest honor of the Cuban state, at a ceremony in the

Palace of the Revolution, the official residence of the president of Cuba and site of formal state

24 functions. Both Cuban and Soviet pronouncements at the ceremony demonstrated that they believed Brezhnev’s visit strengthened Soviet-Cuban relations. Two days before Brezhnev’s arrival, the Cuban Council of Ministers unanimously agreed to bestow the order on Brezhnev in honor of his “internationalist solidarity” and “his friendship for the Socialist Revolution of

Cuba.” The Council added that “your [Brezhnev’s] historic visit to our country constitutes a valiant and singular contribution to the development of relations between the peoples of the

USSR and Cuba.” 81 In his acceptance speech, Brezhnev stated that “in this decoration I see, before everything else, a symbol of the strong and sincere friendship and indestructible fraternity that has been established between the Soviet Union and socialist Cuba.”82

The main event of the next day, January 31, saw Brezhnev and Castro tour the newly built Vladimir Lenin Vocational School in Havana. According to the Cuban magazine Bohemia, the school was a symbol of Soviet aid to Cuba, having been constructed in a collaborative effort between Soviet and Cuban experts. Soviet pedagogical specialists made sure that the Cuban teachers were well trained and Soviet equipment made the science labs and classrooms perfect environments for learning.83 As he ended his speech at the school’s dedication ceremony, Fidel

Castro applauded Brezhnev for his “brave struggle for world peace” and “feelings of friendship and affection for our revolutionary fatherland.”84

Portrayals of Soviet economic subsidies to Cuba in the official Soviet documentary film on Brezhnev’s visit show how economically vigorous the Soviet-Cuban alliance was by

81 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 45-46.

82 Ibid., 49.

83 Bohemia, January 25, 1974.

84 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 56.

25 enumerating the different areas of the Cuban economy that Soviet technicians and technology had helped to modernize. Documentaries like this would have been shown in Soviet movie theaters before a feature film, suggesting that the representations of Cuba projected in the documentary were intended for the average Soviet citizen. In stressing the sizeable nature and scale of Soviet-Cuban economic cooperation, the film gives the viewer a vision of Cuba as a modernizing socialist island, full of enthusiastic and committed citizens who appreciated the aid given by the Soviet Union. As the narrator of the documentary film states, by 1974 “Soviet-

Cuban cooperation covers all the different areas of life” in Cuba. In an interview at a Havana metallurgical plant built with Soviet expertise, one worker expressed that Cubans were doing everything they could to build socialism and improve their friendship with the Soviet people. As the Soviet journal Latinskaia Amerika (Latin America) notes, several of the 8,000 Soviet experts that had traveled to Cuba since 1959 helped with the construction of new plants like the one featured in the documentary in order to process the nickel (an essential ingredient in steel) that was mined on the island.85 At a construction site one of the workers opined that “we are sure that

Cuban-Soviet friendship helps us a lot to build socialism and communism. That is why we are extremely happy for Brezhnev’s visit.” The viewer is then taken to a sugar cane field, where the documentary plainly contrasts the old way of harvesting sugar cane by hand with machetes and the new Soviet combines, which easily sucked up the cane and deposited it in a trailing truck.

The viewer learns that Soviet and Cuban engineers together have largely automated the process of harvesting sugar cane, making it much easier than before. Constructing an automated sugar cane harvester had been an especially difficult task for Soviet engineers because sugar cane did

85 V. N. Novikov, “Prazdnik bratskoi Kuby,” Latinskaia Amerika no. 2 (1974): 10. Latinskaia Amerika covered all kinds of Latin American issues, from foreign relations and politics to music and culture. The journal itself boasted that everyone from non-experts to academics who studied Latin America enjoyed reading its content.

26 not grow in the Soviet Union.86 This “economic cooperation” spread over every area of the

Cuban economy, including geology, transport, energy, and chemicals.87 As exemplified in the documentary film, Cuba and the Soviet Union closely cooperated in all areas of economic development and Brezhnev’s visit served as a way to highlight this cooperation.

A plethora of other events indicate a concerted effort to demonstrate the strength of

Soviet-Cuban ties. Brezhnev agreed to aid Cuba in the exploitation of offshore oil resources and help develop Cuban civil aviation.88 The general secretary watched the Soviet National

Basketball Team play against the Cuban national team (Cuba won), received gifts from Soviet and Cuban Young Pioneers (the equivalent of the Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts in the U.S.) in

Santiago de Cuba, and paid a visit to the Soviet-Cuban Friendship Society in Havana.

Additionally, throughout Brezhnev’s visit both Soviet and Cuban sources referred consistently to the historical similarities between the Soviet and Cuban Revolutions and their common conflicts with the West. In the absence of any kind of cultural, linguistic, or religious links, these shared influences were able to become uniting themes that highlighted the few things that Cuba and the Soviet Union shared. While the most prominent mention of these motifs came in the hallmark speeches that Brezhnev and Castro gave in Havana on January 29, they represent recurring themes in the Soviet and Cuban media throughout Brezhnev’s visit. In referring to these uniting themes, press depictions reinforced Brezhnev’s attempts to strengthen the Soviet-

Cuban alliance.

86 Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro pozhalovat’- govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

87 Novikov, “Prazdnik bratskoi Kuby,” 10.

88 “Brezhnev Ends Week in Cuba; Strengthened Ties Seen,” The Jerusalem Post (1950-1988); Jerusalem, Israel, February 4, 1974.

27 Consumers of both Soviet and Cuban media would have picked up on the comparisons, as the following examples make clear. One article on the history of the Soviet Union during

WWII, appearing in Granma just before Brezhnev’s arrival, seems to compare postwar Soviet history and postrevolutionary Cuban history. The article discusses the challenges faced by the

Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of WWII, remarking that there was an “imperialist blockade” surrounding the Soviet Union and that the Soviet people were menaced by “the threats of the imperialists that built a cordon of military bases around the USSR and obligated the Soviet people to make gigantic efforts not only to rebuild their economy, but also to develop their defenses.”89 The language of imperialist blockades, military bases, and the description of Soviet experiences could easily have applied to Cuba. This article would certainly have reminded

Cubans of the U.S. economic blockade against the island, beginning in 1960, and of the

Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, which the U.S. has illegally held since the Cuban Revolution.

These kinds of press representations seem similar to portrayals of Cuba in the early 1960s Soviet press, where pictures of Cuban guerilla fighters and enormous cheering crowds celebrating the

Revolution’s victory echoed pictures of the euphoric Soviet post-WWII celebrations.90 Cubans reading this article in 1974 would have understood that the United States was the enemy that both they and the Soviets shared.

One example from the Soviet media of these recurring themes stands out. On February 2,

Brezhnev and Castro traveled by plane to Santiago de Cuba on the eastern end of the island.

Santiago was a natural destination for the Soviet entourage. Cuba’s second largest city, Santiago possessed a long tradition as a center of uprisings against the Spanish and American

89 Juan Marrero, “A las orillas del Dniéper: de entre las cenizas y las ruinas,” Granma, January 28, 1974.

90 Gorsuch, “‘Cuba, My Love,’” 507.

28 governments and was in fact the location of Fidel Castro’s first failed attempt at revolution in

July 1953. The residents of Santiago showed their appreciation toward Brezhnev by greeting him at the airport and lining his route from the airport to the city just as in Havana several days earlier. Even though a welcome banner stretching over the highway spelled his first name wrong

(Leonod instead of Leonid), Brezhnev seemed to be grateful for the reception. In the Soviet documentary film, Brezhnev and Castro are shown visiting a house outside of Santiago that served as a site for storing arms during the Cuban Revolutionary War (1956-1959). While sitting on the low white stone well used to conceal the arms, Castro begins to tell Brezhnev of his experiences in the Cuban Revolutionary War. Footage of Castro, Che Guevara, and other Cuban guerilla combatants accompanied the Cuban leader’s story, giving Castro’s descriptions a visual representation. Brezhnev then reciprocates with his own war stories, regaling Castro of his time as a political officer on the Eastern Front of WWII.91 Images and short clips of Brezhnev from the Eastern Front begin to flit by. In the context of other efforts to connect the Cuban and Soviet experiences, this brief segment suggests that the two leaders’ involvements in the Cuban

Revolutionary War and WWII were being equated. This portion of the film bears some similarity to what Anne Gorsuch describes in her article on Soviet cultural depictions of Cuba in the early

1960s. As the Soviet press conveyed the 1959 Cuban Revolution to Soviet citizens, this event conjured up memories of important historical moments in Soviet history, such as the 1917

Revolution, Soviet support for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Soviet victory in WWII.92 The difference is that the emotions Gorsuch describes appear to be more spontaneous in nature, while in this case the film makers are the ones drawing the connections

91 Iu. Monglovskii, Dobro pozhalovat’- govorit Kuba.., 1974, https://www.net-film.ru/film-7489.

92 Gorsuch, “‘Cuba, My Love,’” 506-07.

29 between the Cuban Revolution and WWII. These and other representations of the Soviet-Cuban alliance created commonalities between the two countries based on their revolutionary experiences and persecution by the West. Drawing these connections at a moment when all eyes in both Cuba and the Soviet Union were focused on Brezhnev and his visit would have ensured maximum exposure, helping to ensure the success of Brezhnev’s visit and his mission of strengthening Soviet-Cuban relations.

On February 2, the night before Brezhnev’s departure, at the Palace of the Revolution both leaders sat down for the official signing ceremony of the joint Soviet-Cuban Declaration, a revealing source that shows what Havana and Moscow thought important for the world to see they agreed on.93 By virtue of the absences or the vagueness in language that appear, one can imply disagreements or lack of agreements from the two parties. A careful reading of the joint declaration suggests that Castro had indeed changed his opinions on détente, or at least what he chose to project to the outside world. The declaration also demonstrates some of the disagreements that lay under the surface of much flowery language and expressions of mutual solidarity.

In general, the declaration promoted further Soviet-Cuban integration on the economic and political levels, gave guarded recognition to détente, expressed solidarity with nations of the

Global South, and praised the sovietization of Cuba. Further economic and political integration

93 The signing ceremony for the Joint Declaration seems to have been edited in the Soviet documentary film, this time to cover up the aging general secretary’s exhaustion and resulting awkward behavior. American diplomats in Moscow, when watching the signing ceremony for the Joint Declaration on live Soviet television, described Brezhnev’s performance as “below [the] minimal standard for [a] formal public occasion.” Brezhnev acted “mechanical and even wooden” and his “failure to respond to Castro’s friendly overtures” was painfully evident. The memo suggests that his appearance “could have been improved by judicious editing.” Evidently the makers of the Soviet documentary took the Americans’ advice, as Brezhnev’s “wooden” appearance was edited out of the documentary coverage of the signing ceremony. “Brezhnev in Cuba,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Russia Moscow, February 5, 1974), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974MOSCOW01706_b.html.

30 were specifically enumerated at length. Moscow commended Havana for holding the first conference of the PCC (Cuban Communist Party) and recognized Cuba’s importance and increasing prominence in the international arena, while Havana bowed to Soviet preeminence within the world communist movement. Brezhnev’s assistant Aleksandrov-Agentov noted that the document was written with one eye on Washington. In not touching any sensitive areas of

U.S.-Soviet relations, Aleksandrov-Agentov remembers, the declaration tried to demonstrate that

Soviet-Cuban relations were of no threat to Washington while strongly signifying continued

Soviet support for Cuban socialism.94

While it was only mentioned a handful of times, détente’s inclusion in the Joint

Declaration is significant. The first page of the declaration makes clear that the leaders of both countries share their views of international politics and “the policy of fighting for the consolidation of peace and international collaboration.”95 The efforts of the socialist countries and other progressive forces had allowed détente to rise to prominence in international relations, leading to the consolidation of peace in international affairs, the declaration reports.96 While supporting détente, the declaration also condemns imperialist aggression. A State Department memo notes that the general agreement on the foreign policy of the socialist states left room for disagreement on specific issues while a different communique calls Cuban support for the improving U.S.-Soviet relationship “backhanded.”97 “Backhanded” support for Soviet foreign

94 Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva, 177.

95 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 10.

96 Ibid., 15.

97 “Brezhnev Visit to Cuba: Joint Declaration,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Russia Moscow, February 5, 1974), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974MOSCOW01739_b.html; “Brezhnev Visit to Cuba: An Overview,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Russia Moscow, February 11, 1974), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974MOSCOW02017_b.html.

31 policy actions, however, was nothing new. Castro had simultaneously criticized Moscow and supported the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia six years earlier. “Begrudged” probably would have described the situation more accurately. It is most probable that Castro never liked détente but, as in 1968, he understood the utility of publicly supporting Soviet initiatives, especially when public support seemed to be the only thing Moscow asked of him.98

These concessions, however, were meaningful. Castro had gone from condemning détente to signing a declaration that endorsed it. In keeping with his long-standing hostility to any warming of U.S.-Soviet relations, Castro projected the appearance of agreement to the outside world. As former Soviet Diplomat in Latin America Yuri Pavlov mentions, “he [Castro] never renounced his views on the questionable value of superpower agreements on peaceful coexistence and disarmament for such small socialist countries as Cuba.”99 Furthermore, Castro and the Cuban leadership apparently refused to accept any kind of moderation in Cuban foreign policy that Brezhnev had urged Castro to adopt during the week’s negotiations.100 There is no evidence, other than Castro’s speeches and his signature on the Joint Declaration, that he gave anything other than a pro forma approval of détente. Feeling assured by newly guaranteed Soviet relationship and Cuba’s readmittance into the Latin American international community from

1972-75,101 Castro’s new attitude reflects the embrace of what H. Michael Erisman calls a policy

98 In August, 1968 Fidel Castro made a televised speech in which he came out in support of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Scholars have since pegged this moment as the beginning of rapprochement between Moscow and Havana and a major turning point in Soviet-Cuban relations. Ian Lumsden, “Cuba,” in The Communist States in the Era of Détente: 1971-1977, ed. Adam Bromke and Derry Novak (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978), 227- 28.

99 Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 95.

100 Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva, 177. 101 Cuba gradually renewed relations with many Latin American countries in the early 1970s, including Peru, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago in 1972, Argentina in 1973, the Bahamas and Panama in 1974, and finally with Colombia and Venezuela in 1975. Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 288.

32 of “selective détente,” which allowed Havana to pursue normalization of relations with the

United States while supporting national liberation movements in the Global South.102

As a February 11 State Department cable points out, Brezhnev must have been satisfied with Castro’s public embrace of his pet policy. Although Castro downplayed détente in an interview for the Soviet paper Izvestiia, the same cable notes, the Soviets had successfully pulled an endorsement of détente out of the Cubans in the Joint Declaration.103 With Cuba’s status as a

Soviet ally reaffirmed by his efforts, Brezhnev had succeeded in pushing Castro and the Cuban leadership to accept what they had openly questioned only two years earlier. With Cuba now publicly accepting détente, the road was open to an improvement within U.S.-Cuban relations and a major obstacle for détente had been overcome.

Further evidence of Castro’s tepid embrace of détente emerged in a July 1974 interview conducted by American reporters in Havana.104 When questioned about his opinions on improved U.S.-Soviet relations, Castro responded that “‘we trust them [The Soviets] completely, the loyalty of the Soviet leadership toward the Cuban revolution, and we have no concerns, [or] worries, on this subject.’”105 In fact, Castro said that “‘we can state that during this period when tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union have relaxed, our relations with the

102 Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations, 43-44.

103 “Brezhnev Visit to Cuba: An Overview,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Russia Moscow, February 11, 1974), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974MOSCOW02017_b.html.

104 Independent journalists Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones secured an interview with Castro in July 1974. Although interviews with Castro were notoriously hard to procure at the time, no American network would purchase the interview footage. Sometime in August after President Nixon’s resignation CBS finally agreed to purchase the footage on the condition that Dan Rather accompany Mankiewicz and Jones back to Cuba in order to update Castro’s opinions on Nixon’s resignation. Castro agreed to be interviewed a second time with Dan Rather in October, 1974. The interview as presented in its book form is an edited compilation of the July and October interviews. Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba, 1st ed. (Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975), 43-47.

105 Mankiewicz and Jones, With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba, 206.

33 Soviet Union have improved. They are better than ever at this time.’”106 The reporter proceeded to ask Castro if he accepted the recent moves toward détente. The Cuban leader avoided giving a direct answer on his part and offered that “‘I think there has been a general acceptance of the policy of relaxation of tensions. We have lived in the past few years in a period of more peace and everyone has welcomed the end of the Cold War.’”107 Fidel Castro’s answer is revealing and supports the conclusion that he disapproved of détente.

While demonstrating Castro’s new stance on détente, the Joint Declaration also hammered home the other important goal of Brezhnev’s visit: to strengthen Soviet-Cuban relations. One of the opening paragraphs declares that “during the visit there was manifested irrefutably one more time the indestructible union between the peoples of the USSR and Cuba and new avenues were opened to continue enlarging the fraternal collaboration between these two countries.”108 As one

Soviet author asserted in 1987, the “Soviet-Cuban declaration mapped out an extensive program of further development of extensive cooperation between the USSR and the Republic of

Cuba.”109

The general secretary left Cuba as he had arrived: to the acclaim of a Cuban crowd. Again, a large mass assembled at the airport to see off the Soviet leader on February 3. Though it paled to the size of the multitude that had welcomed him, this smaller gathering of Cubans was no less enthusiastic. The Soviet documentary film shows that Fidel Castro, after hugging Brezhnev goodbye, seemed saddened as he watched the general secretary’s plane take off to Moscow.

106 Ibid.

107 Ibid., 207.

108 En aras del triunfo de la paz y el socialismo, 10.

109 M. V. Grishchenko, Letopis’ vazhneishikh sobytii Sovetsko-kubinskoi druzhby i sotrudnichestva, 1959-1985 (Kiev: Naukova dumka, 1987), 75.

34 Upon the delegation’s return, the Soviet Politburo officially approved of the results of

Brezhnev’s visit, calling the Joint Declaration “a very important document that synthesizes the experience of fifteen years of a truly internationalist collaboration between the world’s first socialist country and the first socialist state of Latin America.” The announcement goes on to say that “the Soviet Union and Cuba, after declaring their decision to strengthen the general peace based on the principles of peaceful coexistence between states of different social systems, have reaffirmed that they are ready . . . to fight with persistence in order to consolidate these positive changes that have been produced in the international environment.”110

Soviet scholars assessing the meaning of Brezhnev’s trip after the general secretary’s return home articulated the meaning of Brezhnev’s visit for détente and Soviet-Cuban relations.

Latinskaia Amerika, issued six times annually in Russian since 1969, began publishing a Spanish edition on a quarterly basis in 1974, apparently to coincide with Brezhnev’s trip. The Spanish- language version reached a large number of readers in over thirty-eight countries in Europe,

North America, and Latin America.111 The first article of the first issue, “An Event of Global

Scope,” projects the image of Soviet aid to Cuba that Moscow wanted the Spanish-speaking (and reading) world to see. The article uses Brezhnev’s visit as an advertisement for the Soviet model of development, heaping great praise on the sovietization of Cuban economic and political structures and paying special attention to Soviet economic assistance to Cuba.112 The Russian version of the same journal, Latinskaia Amerika, published several articles in its 1974 editions on

Brezhnev’s Cuban tour. Articles such as “A Celebration of Fraternal Cuba” commend Soviet-

110 Aleksandrenkov, Vizit Leonida Il’icha Brezhneva v Respubliku Kuba, 108-10.

111 “Unas palabras a los lectores” América Latina no. 1 (1974): 5-6.

112 Vladimir Tsaregorodtsev, “Acontecimiento de alcance mundial,” América Latina, no. 1 (1974): 7.

35 Cuban cooperation, with cooperation meaning heavy Soviet economic subsidies, citing the fact that 8,000 Soviet technical experts had traveled to Cuba.113 In a volume on international cooperation between Cuba and the Soviet Union the author mentions Brezhnev’s visit as evidence that the two countries were committed to increasing their knowledge of each other and of increasing cooperation between their governments and societies.114

Citing the effect of the general secretary’s time in Cuba on détente, an article in the Spanish edition of América Latina states that “Brezhnev’s visit had already become known around the world for its influence in strengthening world peace and international detente.”115 Another

Soviet scholar in 1974 wrote of Brezhnev’s visit as “the expression of the indefatigable effort of

Soviet communists and personally of Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, aimed at expanding and deepening of the relaxation of international tension in its transformation in the irreversible process in accordance with the policy of peace of the 24th Congress of the CPSS.”116 After

Brezhnev had returned on February 6, Izvestiia, in evaluating his visit, called Brezhnev’s trip to

Cuba “a new investment in the matter of peace and socialism on our planet.”117 The certainty that

Brezhnev’s visit had been “An Event of World Significance,” as the title to one Latinskaia

Amerika article conveyed, seemed connected to broader Soviet foreign policy in Latin

America.118 Another article in Latinskaia Amerika, “Soviet Foreign Policy and Latin America,”

113 Novikov, “Prazdnik bratskoi Kuby,” 10.

114 F. Grobarta and G. L. Simrnova, Internatsional’noe sotrudnichestvo KPSS i KP Kuby: Istoriia i sovremennost’ (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1988), 128-29.

115 Tsaregorodtsev, “Acontecimiento de alcance mundial,” 7.

116 N. N. Chigirʹ, SSSR-Kuba: V edinom stroiu k obshchei tseli (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo “Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia,” 1974), 60.

117 “Vo imia nashego bratstva, radi mira na zemle: goriachee odobrenie itogov Vizita L. I. Brezhneva na Kubu,” Izvestiia, February 6, 1974.

118 Vladimir Tsaregorodtsev, “Sobytie mirovogo znacheniia,” Latinskaia Amerika, no. 3 (1974): 6.

36 explains to the reader that “the foreign policy course of the USSR, which is based on the principles of proletarian internationalism and peaceful coexistence between states with different socioeconomic systems, answers completely to the national interests of the people of Latin

American countries.”119 The release of the Spanish language version of Latinskaia Amerika in

March 1974 also suggests that Brezhnev’s Cuban tour was connected in some way to larger

Soviet foreign policy goals in Latin America.

Brezhnev’s visit became a touchstone in Soviet works on Soviet-Cuban relations. The placement of the many mentions of Brezhnev’s visit within these publications show us that it became a token representation that signified the strength of the Soviet-Cuban alliance. Several volumes on this topic begin with quotes from Brezhnev’s visit, including the edited volume

Soviet-Cuban Relations: 1917-1977 and USSR-Cuba: On One Side with One Goal, which suggest the visit’s importance.120 The English-language publication USSR-Cuba: Friends

Forever ends with an excerpt from one of Brezhnev’s Cuban speeches.121 As previously mentioned, the first Spanish edition of the Soviet journal Latin America was published on the heels of Brezhnev’s visit in March 1974, and begins with an article on Brezhnev’s visit.122

U.S. and international newspapers as well as U.S. Government sources agreed that

Brezhnev’s visit seemed to represent a success for détente. A State Department communique concludes that the “Soviets seem, at least, to have moved Fidel Castro a few notches in direction

119 V. I. Gvozdarev, “Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika i Latinskaia Amerika,” Latinskaia Amerika, no. 2 (1974): 12.

120 A. D. Vekarevich, Sovetsko-kubinskie otnosheniia: 1917-1977 (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo nauka, 1980); Chigirʹ, SSSR-Kuba.

121 USSR-Cuba: Friends Forever (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Pub. House, 1978).

122 Tsaregorodtsev, “Acontecimiento de alcance mundial,” 7.

37 of moderation” and that “Brezhnev is probably satisfied with the extent to which his Cuba visit .

. . won Cuban adherence to such Soviet priorities as communist solidarity and détente.”123 An

Israeli paper reported that “most observers in Havana believe that the talks between Castro and

Brezhnev will result in a further alignment by Cuba to Soviet foreign policy and a strengthening of relations between the two countries.”124

123 “Brezhnev Visit to Cuba: An Overview,” Wikileaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (Moscow, February 11, 1974), https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974MOSCOW02017_b.html.

124 “Brezhnev Ends Week in Cuba; Strengthened Ties Seen,” The Jerusalem Post (1950-1988); Jerusalem, Israel, February 4, 1974.

38

CONCLUSION

A Soviet scholar writing in 1974 summed up Brezhnev’s visit as “the expression of the indefatigable effort of Soviet communists and personally of Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, aimed at the expanding and deepening of the relaxation of international tension in its transformation in the irreversible process in accordance with the policy of peace of the 24th Congress of the CPSS.”125

Indeed, sources from many facets of Brezhnev’s visit confirm that the general secretary sought to buttress détente through his 1974 Cuban tour. He accomplished this task by reinforcing the

Soviet-Cuban alliance, a task toward which sources illustrate he devoted a large amount of his seven days on the “island of freedom.” With Cuban fears at least somewhat allayed, Fidel Castro endorsed détente. In this respect, Brezhnev’s visit was indeed a success. But what about the

Soviet leader’s other stated goal of improving U.S.-Cuban relations?

There is no evidence that Brezhnev’s trip improved U.S.-Cuban ties. As Brezhnev returned to

Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko traveled to Washington from Havana. Many journalists suspected at the time that Gromyko would advocate for better U.S.-Cuban relations in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, citing favorable coverage in the Soviet press for U.S. politicians who advocated for normalizing relations with Cuba.126 When questioned, both Kissinger and Gromyko defied the press’s expectations and denied speaking about Cuba

125 Chigirʹ, SSSR-Kuba, 60.

126 “TASS Hint on Aim of Cuba Talks,” The Times of London, February 5, 1974, The Times Digital Archive; Terri Shaw, “Gromyko Trip Here Stirs Talk of U.S.-Cuba Thaw,” The Washington Post, February 4, 1974.

39 during the talks.127 Unrelatedly, U.S.-Cuban relations did, however, show signs of recovering in the immediate aftermath of Brezhnev’s visit after a clandestine initiative from Secretary of State

Henry Kissinger in April 1974. The two sides relayed messages through intermediaries whom

Kissinger carefully choose to maintain plausible deniability, as he kept this back-channel diplomacy a secret from President Nixon.128 It seemed for a short while that U.S.-Cuban relations were actually headed toward normalization in early 1975, until Cuba landed troops in

Angola in November in support of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola

(MPLA), a Communist rebel group with ties to the Soviet Union, against U.S. backed South

African troops in the Angolan Civil War. Research conducted by historian Piero Gleijeses in the

Cuban archives confirms that Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership made the decision to send troops to Southern Africa against Moscow’s advisement. Castro counted on Moscow to back him up and indeed the Soviet Union eventually followed Havana’s lead, stepping up its support of the

MPLA as well.129 Cuban intervention in Angola shocked Washington and made any rapprochement impossible considering the domestic climate of U.S. politics, which had already begun turning against détente.130 The Cuban intervention in Angola put detente under even more pressure in Washington, as the U.S. saw Cuban support for the Angolan MPLA as a Soviet intervention.131 In the end, Havana deemed support for the MPLA to be more important than

127 Bernard Gwertzman, “Gromyko Begins Meeting with Kissinger and Nixon: Talks Focus on the Mideast and a Range of Soviet-American Issues, but Both Sides Deny Discussion of Cuba, The New York Times, February 5, 1974.

128 William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 119-20.

129 Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 305-07.

130 LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 145.

131 Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 423.

40 improved relations with Washington, refusing to compromise on its internationalist principles in order to save rapprochement with the United States.132 What remains unclear, however, is whether or not this brief upward trend in U.S.-Cuban ties was related to Brezhnev’s visit.

As for the effect of détente on the Soviet-Cuban alliance, the reduction in superpower tensions proved to be a catalyst for further strengthening of ties between Moscow and Havana.

As détente progressed, Havana protested. Understanding that the Cold War was anything but cold in the Global South, Havana feared that détente would only weaken Soviet resolve to defend

Cuba. Brezhnev appeased Cuban fears of potential American aggression by further integrating

Cuba politically and economically into the Soviet sphere, shown by Cuban admission into

CEMA, and by Brezhnev’s visit Cuba in 1974. The story of the Cuban-Soviet alliance during the era of détente seems to confirm historian Odd Arne Westad’s assertion that “the most important aspects of the Cold War were neither military nor strategic, nor Europe-centered, but connected to political and social development in the Third World.”133 Without a relaxation in tensions between Washington and Moscow, it may have been difficult indeed for Brezhnev, considering the caution he exhibited in his Cuba policy, to have admitted Cuba into CEMA or to have visited

Cuba at all. This conclusion also supports the assertions of historians Carole Fink and Michael

Morgan, who both argue that détente served as a way for both superpowers to strengthen their own positions within their respective blocs.134

132 Ibid., 151.

133 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 396.

134 Michael Cotey Morgan, Personal Conversation with the Author, October 10, 2018; Carole Fink, Cold War: An International History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2017), 148.

41 What does Brezhnev’s visit tell us about the Soviet-Cuban alliance itself? The general secretary’s Cuban tour indicates that the Cuban-Soviet relationship was not as one-sided as the surrogate thesis contends. The fact that Brezhnev had to negotiate with Castro on détente shows us that Cuba was not a compliant recipient of Soviet aid even though its economy relied on gigantic Soviet subsidies. Cuba possessed intrinsic value as a former U.S. neocolonial possession and the only communist country in the Western hemisphere. The launching of the Spanish- language version of the Soviet journal Latinskaia Amerika on the occasion of Brezhnev’s Cuban trip points to the inherent value Cuba maintained as a propaganda piece in Latin America for the

Soviet model of development. In the 1970s, Cuba continuously acted to gain more influence in its relationship vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Toward this end, Havana developed and maintained diplomatic connections in Africa and Latin America on which the Soviet Union came to rely, especially as Central America emerged as a revolutionary hotspot in the 1980s.135 The case of

Cuban and Soviet involvement in the Angolan Civil War demonstrates that Cuba was capable of leading the Soviet Union into international conflicts. Castro’s embrace of détente does, however, indicate the limitations that Havana’s Soviet connection established. As much as he disliked the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations, Cuba’s Soviet connection forced Fidel Castro to at least give a pro forma endorsement of détente. Ultimately, both Brezhnev and Castro used the Soviet-Cuban alliance effectively to their own ends.

135 Erisman, Cuba’s International Relations, 4-7.

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Raleigh, Donald J. Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Randall, Margaret. Exporting Revolution: Cuba’s Global Solidarity. Duke University Press, 2017.

46 Sand, G. W. Soviet Aims in Central America: The Case of Nicaragua. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989.

Shearman, Peter. The Soviet Union and Cuba. Chatham House Papers 38. London; New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.

Vail’, Petr, and Aleksandr Genis. 60-ye. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis Publishers, 1989.

Vekarevich, A.D. Sovetsko-kubinskie otnosheniia: 1917-1977. Moskva: izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1980.

Westad, Odd Arne. The Cold War: A World History. First edition. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

______. The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Zubok, Vladislav. Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Bowker, Mike. “Brezhnev and Superpower Relations.” In Brezhnev Reconsidered, edited by Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, 90-109. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Bromke, Adam and Derry Novak. “Introduction.” In The Communist States in the Era of Détente: 1971-1977, edited by Adam Bomke and Derry Novak, 1-7. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978.

Gorsuch, Anne E. “‘Cuba, My Love’: The Romance of Revolutionary Cuba in the Soviet Sixties‘Cuba, My Love.’” The American Historical Review 120, no. 2 (2015): 497–526.

Gvozdarev, V.I. “Sovetskaia vneshniaia politika i Latinskaia Amerika.” Latinskaia Amerika, no. 2 (1974): 12-20.

Dominguez, Jorge I. “The Nature and Uses of the Soviet-Cuban Connection.” In The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship, edited by Eusebio Mujal-León, 159-82. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Katz, Mark N. “The Soviet-Cuban Connection.” International Security 8, no. 1 (1983): 88–112.

Lumsden, Ian. “Cuba.” In The Communist States in the Era of Détente: 1971-1977, edited by Adam Bromke and Derry Novak, 227-43. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1978.

Novikov, V.N. “Prazdnik bratskoi Kuby.” Latinskaia Amerika, no.2 (1974): 6-11.

47 Pérez, Louis A. “Fear and Loathing of Fidel Castro: Sources of US Policy Toward Cuba.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34, no. 2 (2002): 227–54.

Raleigh, Donald J. “‘Soviet’ Man of Peace: Leonid Il´ich Brezhnev and His Diaries.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 4 (2016): 837–68.

Tsaregorodtsev, Vladimir. “Acontecimiento de alcance mundial.” América Latina, no. 1 (1974): 7-18.

Tsaregorodtsev, Vladimir. “Sobytie mirovogo znacheniia.” Latinskaia Amerika, no. 3 (1974): 6-15.

“Unas palabras a los lectores.” América Latina, no. 1 (1974): 5-6.

Webber, Mark. “‘Out of Area’ Operations: The Third World.” In Brezhnev Reconsidered, edited by Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, 110-34. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Zubok, Vladislav. “The Soviet Union and Détente of the 1970s.” Cold War History 8, no. 4 (2008): 427–47.

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